SOME BANDS need a little time between records,” says MC5 flame-keeper Wayne Kramer down the line from Los Angeles. “I needed a lot of time between records!”
It seems unreal, but in 2024 truth trumps fantasy: Heavy Lifting, the first new MC5 LP since 1971’s High Time, arrives in spring. With original drummer Dennis ‘Machine Gun’ Thompson on two tracks and Detroit enforcer Bob Ezrin producing, Kramer will be joined by Tom Morello, Don Was, Vernon Reid, Slash and more. But why now?
Kramer cites the pandemic and the vacation-from-sanity that was the Trump presidency sending him into a dudgeon of depression: “I know myself well enough to know that the treatment for my meaninglessness was to take creative action,” he says. Having begun writing with Oakland singer and new MC5 frontman Brad Brooks, by mid-2022 15 songs had manifested: after cutting versions at his home studio, Kramer played them to old pal Ezrin. “Bob said, ‘These are terrific – you’re making a new MC5 record!’ I hadn’t thought of that, but I said, You could be right… we said, Hell, let’s make this record.”
Recorded in LA, so far only the hard rocking title song and re-recorded Kramer solo track Edge Of The Switchblade – with Alice In Chains’ William DuVall on vocals – have been heard, but of the rest, Kramer says, “I wanted to kind of pick up where we left off with High Time. Pushing music forward, carrying a message of self-efficacy and empowerment – and just to have fun. It’s all in the MC5. Creativity is the solution for the challenges we face.
“I put everybody to work,” he adds. “The record is a guitar extravaganza – everyone, and yours truly, all bashin’ away on electric guitars. That’s my goal – to overload the guitar.”
Individual songs, he promises, will take in driving (“you can take the boy out of Detroit…”) and social breakdown, while another “deals with disingenuousness, you know, being a phoney.”
To the negative voices who argue it just won’t be the same, he says this: “They’re right. It’s not the same. We are not living in 1968. We’re in the era that we’re in, and one has to address that. In all art, you have to answer the question: so what? Why should I care? Because I made the best music I possibly could.
“The MC5 has been the main concourse, the main roadway, for my creativity for just about my entire life,” he goes on. “I hope I’m true to the spirit of the band. It’s important from the fans’ perspective, and from my personal perspective, to honour the legacy and my partners when I was a young man… it’s worth celebrating.”
He’s already planning another MC5 studio set and promises much international touring with Brooks, bassist Vicki Randle, guitarist Stevie Salas and drummer Winston Watson Jr. “We’re gonna go everywhere,” he says. “The MC5 is a show band, always was. We’re playing with matches – I want to get out there and burn some stages down!”
Picture: Charles McKay
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